Chapter 1 #2
The streets were still choked with rubble.
Where once she'd sped through her neighborhood in constant danger of being ticketed for speeding, now Cassi spent most of the three miles between her and work maneuvering the light motorcycle around broken asphalt, wrecked cars, parts of buildings and other things she didn't want to contemplate too closely.
There were people on the street. Anyone getting anywhere at all was best done in daylight.
Once the sun set, the predators came out.
Unlike the myths of vampires, Vampyren could exist in the sun's light the same as any human.
It was just at night they lacked any inhibition at all.
Even their own kind couldn't control the more hungry among them.
It wasn't the human response to nightfall, the inhibitions falling away because no one could see what they were doing. It was something in the Vampyren that responded to the dark by harking back to their less civilized days.
There'd been one scientist on the news and splashed all over the internet who theorized – based on absolutely nothing, since humans had no idea where the Vampyren came from – that their home planet had experienced some bizarre event that left them with no nighttime.
Kind of like Alaska in the summer. His point wasn't that this had driven the predators among them mad, but rather that now night had an effect on them.
The fact that this in no way helped anyone on Earth didn't slow him down.
He kept up with insane suggestions like a series of mirrored satellites around the planet that would keep it light all the time.
Swell, great idea, but the rest of the Vampyren were just as dangerous, they just weren't quite as dangerous as the others.
The Vampyren eventually got tired of the scientist, publicly executed him and drank his blood.
Cassi kept the television off that day.
The Vampyren were a brutal race and they were dividing up the human race to the point where nobody had time to contemplate mirrored satellites or what that would do to Earth and humans separate and apart from whether it would limit the Vampyren attacks to only those that were "allowed."
In Vampyren hierarchy, the warriors got first pick.
Of human mates. Of human breeders. Of humans for food.
Just like human society, the hierarchy stratified who got what.
Maybe it wasn't even that different, the way humans were parceled out however they were most useful.
Just maybe the results were somewhat more brutal.
That didn't mean that returning humanity to their own control wasn't the goal.
Just that the goal might be making the best of an already untenable situation.
Brecca was ready. Her apartment was in a squalid section of Los Angeles, which was still hanging on and many of the buildings still standing because it apparently hadn't looked worth knocking down to the Vampyren.
Or maybe it amused them to think of humans huddling there.
Brecca had inadvisably lived there even before the invasion, constantly saying she was going to move but never quite managing it.
Brecca presented herself as a cupcake, all soft and sweet, but they'd been friends long enough for Cassi to know the steel underneath.
"Ready for work?" she asked, standing in Brecca's doorway.
"You're working. I'm warming a barstool." Brecca, pointlessly but out of habit, locked her door as she stepped out.
"I'm working, you're keeping me company so I don't smash a beer mug over a grabby customer's head. It's a valuable service."
Brecca smiled, cocking her strangely colored head, her dye job fading badly. "For you or for them?"
"Yes," Cassi said and headed downstairs to the bike.
It was still daylight as she headed to the bar. There were humans foraging on the street and human patrols which had no power and did little but pick up the pieces after a vamp attack.
There were Vampyren on the streets, too, looking like they'd always owned the place. Cassi shuddered, passing a swarm of Vampyren like any human gang. They carried chains and blades and stalked with imposing arrogance.
They looked hungrily at her as she rode by with Brecca clinging to her waist and she wished she'd wrapped herself in her leather jacket as well as her helmet, but the day was scorching hot summer. Their eyes watched her, and their fangs gleamed in the sunlight.
Random Vampyren attacks were common. Enough so that Brecca theorized they were on purpose, to keep humans off balance and insecure. As if broken cities and rural populations fighting off the swarms of metro citizens decamping daily wasn't enough.
The Vampyren camped out in the cities. They sent their soldiers into the rural areas and it was there the fighting was still going on as a groundswell of rebellion trembled into half-life.
The conquerors camped where it was easy: the human population was used to having its needs met by government.
Once those needs were being met by services up and running again, most of them fell into a rhythm, hating the new government and the new rules as if it were just an administration voted in that they didn't care for and would just have to outwait.
No human government, however bad, had ever done that, Cassi thought, braking hard enough to slew her back tire. She straddled the bike, peering ahead, studying the road ahead of her.
No longer viable road. Fairfax Avenue ended before her dive bar destination where a series of metal spikes driven into the concrete of the sidewalks stopped even traffic as narrow as Cassi on her bike. Brec's fingers tightened convulsively on her.
Three heads adorned the central pikes, and a good dozen more on either side stopped anyone from driving past even if they were willing to pass something that gruesome.
The strength to drive the metal into concrete was awesome.
And the drive to do so. The will to decapitate enemies and take their women.
She had no idea who was left beheaded there.
Local politicians probably; she'd never paid attention when they were in power. This was no time to start.
Or to sightsee.
She looked around quickly. Still daylight on the streets, even though she was heading to a swing shift stint at the bar. Everyone on the street had made themselves scarce at the blocking of the street.
One of the things that amazed her about the invasion was that, despite celebrity appearances and normalcy-loving governments, people hadn't just gone back to business as usual.
Maybe it was just too hard to do with heads on pikes.
It was recent, too. The very trailings of blood still stained the concrete, barely set.
Cassi took another quick look around, feeling like she was being watched by more than the closed circuit cameras the Vampyren had taken control of in the first few days of being on Earth.
From the absurd government propaganda about how great it was that an automated Big Brother was always watching everyone and privacy a thing of the past, the mottos had changed overnight from Smart Cities are Safe Cities to The Vampyren Watch.
She gunned the bike, shivering again as the noise caught the attention of a cadre of soldiers and, worse, a couple young Vampyren females.
Time to go. The females were so much more deadly. The males might rape and drain and kill. The females, reports said, enjoyed their meals still alive and screaming.
Cassi wheeled around, back the way they had come, finding another street to lead them to the Mellow Hello bar and its new designation.
The End of the World Bar had never seemed more like a haven.